Contemporary Reflections on Business Ethics

This second edition of Ronald Duska's 2007 book Contemporary Reflections in Business Ethics contains many of the fine articles in the original edition as well as 20 new entries, and two papers that have not been previously published. The editors have included new introductions to each part and an epilogue outlining why and in what ways Duska’s work is prescient to present and future research in business ethics as well as to its contributions to practice in commerce. 

The late Ronald Duska was an important scholar in business ethics, and his work on an Aristotelian approach is innovative for this field.  Moreover, Duska is one of the few business ethics scholars to work on issues in finance and the financial series industry, despite their central roles in mature economies in the United States, Europe, and East Asia. Those contributions, included in this second edition, most for the first time, are part of his seminal thinking in this field to which few other scholars have participated.  

Thus, this new edition is important not merely to honor a distinguished scholar in business ethics, but also for his philosophical thinking that is central to new thinking in this field.

ORIGINAL AUTHOR:

Ronald F. Duska, who began his career as a philosopher, has, over the last 30 years, established himself as one of the leading scholars in the field of business ethics. In the past decade, he has concentrated on ethics in the financial services industry because of his affiliation with The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, an institution that specializes in educating financial services professionals. This affiliation gives Duska regular interaction with producers, managers, and top executives in the financial services industry. This book includes a selection of the articles Duska has written throughout the years on ethics, business ethics, teaching ethics, agency theory, postmodernism, employee rights, and ethics in accounting and the financial services industry. The articles reflect Duska’s underlying philosophical concerns and their application to the real-world challenges of practitioners—an overarching method that might be called anAristotelian common-sense approach to ethical decision making.

EDITORS:

Patricia H. Werhane, Professor Emerita, was formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia where she is a senior fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at Darden . She was also the Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. Today she is  adjunct professor at the University of Illinois Gies College of Business and a Fellow for the Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society. Werhane was a visiting Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth College, Arthur Andersen Fellow at Cambridge University and Erskine Visiting Fellow, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ.  She is the author or editor of over 30 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Currently she is the co-producer of an Emmy award-winning documentary television series, BigQuestions aired on Chicago Illinois Channel 11’s second channel, PRIME. Werhane began her career at Loyola University Chicago as Wirtenberger Chair of Business Ethics.

Norman E. Bowie is the former Elmer L Andersen Chair in Corporate Responsibility at the University of Minnesota. He has authored or edited 18 books and about 100 articles. Professor Bowie is the leading scholar in the application of Kant's moral philosophy to business. His book on that topic is Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective and has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. His co-edited text Ethical Theory and Business is in the 10th edition. He has held a position as Dixons Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at the London Business School and been a fellow at Harvard's Program in Ethics and the Professions. He is past president of the Society for Business Ethics, the American Society for Value Inquiry and is past Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association. He is a former Associate Editor of Business Ethics Quarterly. In August 2009 he received a life-time achievement award in scholarship presented by the Society for Business Ethics. In 2012 a festchrift Kantian Business Ethics honoring his work was published by Edward Elgar